The Effect of Major Organizational Policy on Employee Attitudes Toward Graduate Degrees

Leaders initiate policies not only to improve the success of their organizations, but to influence employee performance, whereby employee attitudes toward a policy objective can influence their resulting behaviors. One group of employees, Air Forceofficers, experienced a policy change in 2005 that discontinued the use of academicdegrees as criteria for officer promotions. With this change, there is a concern that thenumber of Air Force officers with graduate degrees might decrease. In particular, seniorleaders in the Civil Engineer (CE) officer career field are concerned that this policychange might reduce the number of officers available to fill critical positions identified asrequiring a graduate degree.This study used a web-based survey to assess the attitudes of CE officers towardpursuing graduate degrees and revealed that their attitudes were not impacted by thepolicy change. In fact, their perceptions regarding the importance of graduate degreesremain high. In addition, the lower their intentions to leave the Air Force, the more effortthey expended researching the pursuit of a graduate degree. Most of them reportedresearching graduate degree information at least once during 2005 and intending to earnone by 2010. Therefore, senior leaders should not expect to see a decline in the numberof CE officers possessing graduate degrees in the near future